Mateo Was Here: A Novella

By Ben Monopoli

Five years after the miraculous events of "The Painting of Porcupine City," Vinicius Bittencourt is stuck. Stuck in the shadow of his missing cousin Mateo. Stuck in a mystery that might never be solved. Stuck in a present that can't compete with his past. Each year he gives himself a new tattoo to mark the time gone by since his life made sense.

In the fifth year, Vini's careful stasis breaks down. His girlfriend leaves him. His group of friends begins to drift apart. When he's had all he can take, heartbreaking news jars him in a new direction, out of his comfort zone, toward a chance at a reboot -- if he can seize it. Along the way a young friend with surprising ties to Mateo will reveal a shocking secret that might finally help Vini learn to move on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Monopoli
• Release date: Dec 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463126097

Ben Monopoli

Ben Monopoli lives in Boston with his husband, Chris.

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Mateo Was Here

a novella

Ben Monopoli

Copyright © 2018 by Ben Monopoli. All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover photo by Choreograph. Cover design by Ben Monopoli. Lighthouse logo by Jake Monopoli.

www.benmonopoli.com

@benmonopoli

This book is also available in paperback.

For my parents

*

No one is taught the art of walking away.

—Clarice Lispector

Mateo Was Here

PROLOGUE

You know those old gods,

the thundery ones from myth and legend? They all had about a million names. Take Odin, the Vikings’ big guy: they say he had more than two hundred. Wanderer, Long Beard, Raven—names like crazy. I bet every person that dude came in contact with gave him a name.

My cousin was kind of like that.

My cousin had names, right? A name he could count on each of his painty fingers. One for each of us who knew him.

To Fletcher he started off as New Guy, remember? Just another office drone in khakis, holding out his painted-striped hand his first day on the job. Soon New Guy became Mateo—then, after that, all the secret names two people who love each other whisper in the dark.

To my little cousin Caleb, to my priminho, he was Father—though never Dad, I guess. Caleb had dads and papas coming out his nose but my cousin wasn’t one of them. To Caleb he was only Father.

To my Auntie Sabina my cousin was Son, the son she sent away to live among the Moon walkers, so he could find his Heaven Spot.

To Tiago and my sister and Edilson and Aline and the rest of our crew he was Dedinhos, Lil’ Fingers, almost since the first time he picked up a can and let loose with colors.

To Oliver Wade he was the green-eyed boy on the subway platform, the boy who used one of those little fingers to draw one heart and to make another strong.

To the millions of strangers who knew his work but who never knew him, he was just the Painter, the mysterious street artist who changed two cities forever—or so they thought.

And to me? To me he was just my cousin. My primo.

Yeah.

For each of the names

he was given there was a hole left behind in the giver when he disappeared. Holes as unique and complicated as the hearts they got bored into in the days and weeks and years after that wintery July day.

This was the hole in my heart:

Whatever my cousin had, whatever surfed on his genes or his spirit into Caleb, surfed right on past me. What he could do, in the end, I couldn’t do. What he made with his passion and his determination I couldn’t make with mine. But in the five years since he— Well, let’s just say since— I came to believe that what he felt, I felt too. The longing. The saudade. The desperation to be more. I would look at my clean hands and I would scream, and imagine, and do whatever else my priminho with his little words and frustrated frown told me to try, but I couldn’t make it happen. And so my heart had a hole.

The hearts that had these holes did whatever they could to fill them, because holes like that couldn’t just be ignored. The hearts told themselves things, chose what to believe, found ways to cope, ways to make peace with the biggest of all mysteries: What happened to Mateo? Some hearts clung to what they could see with their eyes and endured the pain of the unknown. Others made up stories to explain the mysteries, and let that be enough.

Some hearts clung to facts, others threw themselves into fiction. And left in the middle was me. I’m a brother, a son, a nephew, a cousin, a friend, a boyfriend—but unlike my cousin I’ve only ever had one name.

My name is Vinicius.

Chapter 1

ViNIcius!! the text read.

Vini set his phone on mute and put it back on the glass countertop. The text, like all ninety thousand before it, piling up like dirty laundry, was from his sister. He could practically hear Olivia stamping her foot, wherever she was, waiting for the Read on her end so she’d know when to officially start pumping steam out her ears.

He would let her wait. He was busy.

He leaned the broom against the wall and emptied the dustpan into a bucket behind the counter, where Zé, who owned this tattoo shop where Vini worked, was standing counting credit-card receipts. The day’s cash from the till sat beside him in a zippered leather lock-bag.

Zé shut the squeaky drawer. He slipped a rubber band off his brightly tattooed wrist and stretched it around the receipts.

You can head out, Bittencourt, Zé said. You have a party to get to, yeah?

I’m going to stay here a while, Vini said, seeing his phone light up with another text. I want to do a little work on myself. I’ll lock up. And then, remember, I’m on vacation for the rest of the week.

Zé frowned and gave Vini a hard look. I forgot it’s that time of year again. What’s tonight? What number?

Well— Vini looked at his hands. It’s five.

Zé tilted his head. Look, Vinicius, no one will ever accuse me of not liking ink, right? He rocked his bare forearms; there wasn’t a millimeter of skin left untattooed. But amigo, at what point does this stop being art and start becoming self-abuse?

Vini shrugged. Who ever said there’s a difference?

His phone was buzzing again. Wordlessly he picked it up and pressed it into the pocket of his jeans.

Go to the party, Zé said.

After Zé was gone the shop was quiet, lit just by the neon signs in the windows and by the blue-white glow spilling out of Vini’s operating room at the back of the shop.

Vini turned off the radio, straightened up the artist portfolio binders—his, Zé’s, the other guys’. Like Vini’s primo’s binders of Polaroids of spray-painted walls, his binder showed all the work he’d done on bodies, including Mateo’s body. When customers showed Vini printouts or photos of things they wanted him to put on their skin, they had no idea the images they so often wanted were painted by the model on page 3 of Vini’s book, the one showing his forearm and the cityscape across it—the one who, beyond the borders of the photo, had shaggy ink-black hair and an elusive grin.

Vini looked up and was startled by a grin at the door, on the other side of the glass, misshapen and wasted. Dull green eyes shrouded by cupped hands peered in at him.

You open? the wasted man shouted. His voice came muffled through the glass.

Closed, Vini said. Sorry.

It’s urgent, need my girl’s name done.

Closed, Vini repeated, louder. Come back tomorrow.

Damn it, man, the guy said. He thumped his fist against the glass, leaving a greasy smear. And he left.

Vini took a breath. As if there was ever such a thing as urgent ink.

His phone was buzzing again.

He took it out of his pocket and put it face-down on the countertop. A puddle of colored light spread across the glass under his hand, yellows and greens leaking through into the display cabinet below, illuminating the rows of the empty ink bottles they kept there for decoration. The light that seemed to be coming out of his hand was so pretty and